People,Places and Things

Published Tuesday February 5, 2013 at 6:00 am

LONDON — In her first video statement since she was nearly killed, a Pakistani schoolgirl shot by the Taliban remained defiant in arguing for girls’ education, saying Monday she would keep up the same campaign that led to her attack.

Speaking clearly but with the left side of her face appearing rigid, 15-year-old Malala Yousufzai said she is “getting better, day by day” after undergoing weeks of treatment at a British hospital.

“I want to serve. I want to serve the people. I want every girl, every child, to be educated. For that reason, we have organized the Malala Fund,” she said in the video. The Malala Fund is a girls’ education charity set up in late 2012 by international nonprofit Vital Voices (vitalvoices.org).

Malala was shot in the head by Taliban militants on Oct. 9 while on her way home from school in northwestern Pakistan. The Islamist group said it targeted her because she promoted girls’ education and “Western thinking” and she criticized the militant group’s behavior when it took over the scenic Swat Valley where she lived.

Birmingham’s Queen Elizabeth Hospital said it has reconstructed her skull and gave her a cochlear implant to restore the hearing in her left ear. Both of those operations were completed Saturday. The public relations firm Edelman said Malala’s video statement was taped Jan. 22.

NEW YORK — Former President Bill Clinton says his wife, former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, has undergone more medical tests, but is “doing much better.”

He made the remarks Monday to New York Congressman Peter King. The two men spoke in front of reporters outside the funeral of former New York City Mayor Ed Koch.

Clinton said his wife had five hours of tests Sunday and was told to “take it easy for another month.”

DEARBORN, Mich. — Hundreds of people, including some of Michigan’s political elite, gathered Monday to celebrate the late Rosa Parks on what would have been her 100th birthday by unveiling a postage stamp in her honor steps from the Alabama bus on which she stared down segregation nearly 60 years ago.

Parks, who died in 2005, became one of the enduring figures of the Civil Rights movement when she refused to cede her seat in the colored section of the Montgomery, Ala., bus to a white man after the whites-only section filled up. Her defiance and the ensuing black boycott of the city bus system helped the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. rise to national prominence.

BOSTON — Fifty years after its publication, a scheduled Boston University symposium will discuss the impact of Betty Friedan’s book “The Feminine Mystique.”

Panelists at the Feb. 12 event will include women’s studies scholars and historians who will look at how the book has influenced American culture.

The 1963 book explored “this problem that has no name,” which was described as a lack of fulfillment experienced by educated women who accepted an idealized homemaking role.

The free event is open to the public, but advance registration is recommended. Visit www.bu.edu/cas.